As
if bombings, industrial sabotage, and
coalition casualties weren’t enough,
Presidential Envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer has more trouble on his hands.

Top Shiite Muslim cleric
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani repeated his call for early elections before the
United States cedes control over Iraq to the U.S. coalition-appointed
Governing Council.

Or else.

The power struggle between
the secular, pro-western exiles from the Sunni and Shiite coalition, the
religious Muslim Shiite, and the Kurds of northern Iraq is just beginning.
Iraqi coalition authority already aware of each group feeling out the empty
political landscape in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture, starting
with the largest party, the Iranian-influenced Shia religious headed by
Sistani. Whether or not, there will be increased violence due to a quick
transfer remains to be seen. What is apparent in Paul Bremer’s style of
governance, persuasion and empathy, is that eventually he will have to
deliver what has been promised (to the Iraqi Governing Council and
Congress).

Or else.

For Presidential Envoy Paul
Bremer, not only did he take a professional risk in taking the role of a
lifetime, running a provisional foreign government in post-wartime, but
enormous, future political risk if his performance isn’t deemed acceptable
by the American public and Congress.

With the capture of Saddam
and at least, a good working reputation between the U.S. army, foreign
contractors, and local Iraqi political leaders, Bremer’s future in a
possible second Bush administration seems almost assured, particularly with
the expected departure of Secretary of State Colin Powell at the end of
President Bush’s first time next January (if Bush is re-elected).

But, beyond the chaos of
everyday life in the Sunni Triangle, which includes Baghdad, and now
infamous Fallujah, Paul Bremer must quickly face the Grand Ayatollah whose
forward political and professional aspirations may lie.

Ali Sistani, the Shiite
Muslim leader who has initially cooperative with the U.S. coalition, desires
early elections giving his party a great advantage to take power from rival
opposition parties, whose size and organization do not nearly match his own.
Playing to his own brand of muscle and negotiation, Sistani quickly rose to
the political stage, after Iraqi exile Ayatollah al-Hakim was assassinated
after the fall of Baghdad.

The socially conservative
Grand Ayatollah using his authority to carry out orders of his own,
regulating trade, crime, and the role of women at work or in the home, his
religious sect capitalizing on the long, banned edits of open, declared
worship amongst Iraqis. As illustrated in the secular-religious conflict
over oil in the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam’s Baath Party sighted such activities
as "potential threats" to Party rule.

And while the Bush
administration may publicly advocate free elections and representative
democracy, the growing power of the repressed Shiite majority in the hands
of Ali Sistani (whose followers advocate an Iranian-style theocracy) cannot
be tolerated by President Bush, whose motives for fighting Saddam Hussein
has shifted from “weapons of mass destruction” to “freedom from a brutal
dictatorship,” and the neoconservative argument of using Iraq as a “warning”
to Iran, North Korea, and Syria against the continued support and sale of
weapons to terror groups, like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Unfortunately for Bush and
Bremer, Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s demand for elections is worrisome because
the Shiite majority would have representative control over any new Iraq.
Badly repressed by Saddam after the first Gulf War, while Hussein’s minority
Sunni Muslims were in control, many Shiites were poor and already dependent
on the United Nation’s Aid for Food programs during Hussein’s regime. Not
surprisingly, the process of coalition reconstruction has been slow to take
hold in areas outside of Baghdad and Basra, while the death of the Baath
Party has given way to the election or “self-appointments” of hundreds of
civil leaders in the South under the direction of Shiite Muslim clerics.

President Bush’s
controversial foreign policy of pre-emptive war leaves the process of
temporary occupation a key component which demands American troop strength
to be at near fighting levels to quell any possible resistance over the
foreseeable future.

This also means that Paul
Bremer’s role as a Presidential Envoy comes with a handshake and promise not
only get Iraqi coalition allies into leadership positions, but quietly weed
out the agitators and repatriated exiles which have little support from the
Iraqi public.

Unlike Bush’s touted
demeanor on Mideast issues, Bremer will have to exercise discretion and
patience for results.